FIJI Water has renovated its Los Angeles office with the goal of achieving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified status through the U.S. Green Building Council, which takes into account water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection and indoor environmental quality.

We recently moved into this beautiful new office space, the design of which considered our employees, our company and the environment in every detail. LEED focuses not only on environmental benefits, but also employee health and well-being, resulting in a workplace design that’s good for people and good for the environment.

One of the office’s most striking features is the abundance of soft and natural light. The workspace walls are slightly lower than those of typical cubicles and include window panels along the top for maximum exposure to the building’s natural light while still providing privacy. In addition, our management team elected to have only four offices in this space, all along one wall, and those offices have large interior glass walls that allow an abundance of natural light to come into the general work area. The natural light is complemented by “barrel lighting” which provides direct and indirect (reflected) light that is much softer and easier on the eyes than traditional direct lighting.

Each workspace is designed efficiently and comfortably. My personal favorite is the multi-purpose mobile filing cabinet that doubles as cushioned seating for visitors. It’s almost as comfortable as the Knoll Chadwick ergonomic chair that every employee has! (In fact, all of the office furniture was manufactured by Knoll, which specializes in sustainably-made furniture that promotes employee comfort and well-being, and has a LEED-certified plant itself.) Other workspace features include:

• Tower cabinet with shelves to store binders, books, etc.
• Narrow cubby for hanging coats or sweaters and for storing personal items like yoga mats and purses
• Flat screen monitors that take up less desk space
• Floating shelves for in/out boxes, pencil holders, etc., keeping desktops free of clutter

The new workspace was manufactured using clean technologies like VOC-free adhesives, low-VOC paints, and recycled steel, aluminum and fabrics. It also includes bamboo floors and cabinetry. Bamboo is a “rapidly renewable building material and product (made from plants that are typically harvested within a ten-year or shorter cycle),” to quote the LEED application form. In other words, bamboo grows and regrows super fast (I have some in my garden, it grows like a weed), so it’s more sustainable than traditional wood materials.

Other less readily visible but equally important features of the new office include the following:

• The lighting power density is 25% more efficient than required by the Title 24 standard. (Title 24 is California’s energy efficiency standard for residential and non-residential buildings.)
• 90% of the kitchen appliances are Energy Star certified. The only exceptions are small appliances like toasters that don’t normally receive an Energy Star certification.
• The bathrooms now have dual flush toilets, resulting in a 30% reduction in water usage. (Incidentally, these are very common in Fiji and other countries, but still unusual in the U.S.)

We were awarded maximum LEED credits for our successful effort to recycle everything possible when disposing of the previous office materials. In total we recycled over 75% of the construction waste.

We hope to have more good news about our efforts toward LEED certification status once the project is complete and all credits are tallied. Stay tuned for updates!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Carbon Footprint, Climate Change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.